E-Waste Treatment And Disposal Methods

E-waste Treatment & Disposal Methods
(a)Landfilling:

  It is a controlled and complete combustion process, in which the waste material is burned in specially designed incinerators at a high temperature (900-1000oC). Advantage of incineration of e-waste is the reduction of waste volume and the Utilization of the energy content of combustible materials. Some plants remove iron from the slag for recycling. By incineration some environmentally hazardous organic substances are converted into less hazardous compounds. Disadvantage of incineration are the emission to air of substances escaping flue gas cleaning and the large amount of residues from gas cleaning and combustion. e-waste incineration plants contribute significantly to the annual emissions of cadmium and mercury. In addition, heavy metals not emitted into the atmosphere are transferred to slag and exhaust gas residues and can reenter the environment on disposal. Therefore, e-waste incineration will increase these emissions, if no reduction measures like removal of heavy metals are taken.

(c)Recycling of e-waste:            Monitors & CRT, keyboards, laptops, modems, telephone boards, hard drives, floppy drives, Compact disks, mobiles, fax machines, printers, CPUs, memory chips, connecting wires & cables can be recycled.
Recycling involves dismantling i.e. removal of different parts of e-waste containing dangerous substances like PCB, Hg, separation of plastic, removal of CRT, segregation of ferrous and non-ferrous metals and printed circuit boards. Recyclers use strong acids to remove precious metals such as copper, lead, gold. The value of recycling from the element could be much higher if appropriate technologies is used. The recyclers working in poorly–ventilated enclosed areas without mask and technical expertise results in exposure to dangerous and slow poisoning chemicals.
The existing dumping grounds in India are full and overflowing beyond capacity and it is difficult to get new...